


War, What is it Good For?

by Steggy



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/M, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 14:59:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3772603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steggy/pseuds/Steggy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agent 13 was content. She fought, she worked, she planned. She participated in the war effort to drive the Germans out of Russia.  She kept her emotions and impulses in check. Until a kid from Brooklyn made her start questioning herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	War, What is it Good For?

**Author's Note:**

> This was a short story that I had to write for my writing class, and that's pretty much why I didn't use their actual names. I think it's kinda cool to be somewhat secretive(?) about it. But anyway, if it's received well, I might consider continuing it since I know the ending is a bit abrupt. Let me know!

“Кровавый черт возьми!”

Her fists balled in anger, her nails pierced through the skin of her palms, her heart raced. Her face flushed with color, warming with boiling blood. Her throat burned from the bitter curses she spat. If she lacked the intelligence, if she didn’t know any better, the wall beside her, as the roof echoed with the sounds of drumming rain, would be littered with holes, and her knuckles would be even more bruised and bloodied. Her fingers ached to be curled around a trigger, to fire off an entire clip into the nearest tree. She was more than desperate to find a way to relieve this fury, this fire that ate at her insides.

She wasn’t the target. She wasn’t the one who had deliberately adhered to the wishes of the enemy. She wasn’t the one who had gone out into the field with a gun strapped to her hip and shot one of their best men point blank in the back of the head, execution style. Yet, she was their main suspect. _Her._ Why her? Is it that hard of a concept to accept a woman being at such a high standing position, even if only _temporarily?_

Her fists slammed down on the nearest surface, an exasperated groan pushing its way past clenched teeth. How dare they believe her to be the culprit. How _dare_ they believe for a second that she would be at the head of such treason.

Agent 13 forced her anger to cool, now spiralling into the boggling concept of what was causing this extrinsic behavior of hers, what had changed. She compelled herself to stop pacing and sit on the edge of a metal chair beside the table. Strewn across the table, the map of the battlefield loomed over her, reminding her of the larger picture. Nothing was more important than the larger picture. Yet, all plans had been put on hold. For _this_. For this absolute _rubbish_.

The frigid metal glued to her warm skin, grounding her and forcing her to collect her whirling, hazy mind. Something had ignited this new, roaring fire inside of her, and that assumed “something” drove her to an instantaneous state of denial.

Emotion effectively clouded her judgment. After such a long period of time spent building the blockade around her mind, barricading against such strongly willed emotions, here she was succumbing to them. And for what purpose? What had been instilled in her to cause this chain reaction?

Her knuckles ached, the bruises purpling beneath the dry, smeared blood that was caked to her skin. The sound of the soldier’s, one of the many that had mocked her, nose shattering rung in her ears, but yet, through it all, she heard one voice. _His_. Not the soldier she broke the nose of. _His._

_Brooklyn._

She heard his voice. Soft. Polite. Respectful. So much different than the others.

So much more admirable than the others.

So much more valiant and resilient than the others.

And perhaps she had her answer as to why she was changing.

 

* * *

  _Hours before…_  

* * *

 

The bitterly cold, bitterly wet, massive fields of Russia whistled with biting winds, shaking the temporary tents violently that then threatened to blow over and leave the soldiers inside exposed to the elements.

“Подкрепление прибыло,” A distant voice bellowed from the opening of her tent, rousing her from a light, questionable slumber. _Reinforcements have arrived._

The relief from the thought of help was quickly crippled by pain.

Trembling from the cold, she pried herself from the hardened cot, crying out beneath her breath as her hands brushed the coarse wool blanket over her, immediately thankful that her commander had taken leave and did not wait for her. Her hands shook as her deep brown eyes struggled to focus on them in the slight early Russian morning light, expecting the worse.

And finding the worse.

But she had to keep going. She had to begin the day, meet the recruits. Train them. Prepare them. Then send them off to war like all the rest.

Agent 13’s mind whirled as the anguish of her discolored fingers echoed through her veins, sending aches and agony all through her, every inch of her screaming as the beginnings of frostbite pressed into the familiar curves of her gun. Her head throbbed, her face contorted in pain, and she sunk her teeth into the flesh of her cheek, tasting blood. But it pulled her thoughts from her fingers, keeping her distracted, redirecting her focus. There was a war to be won. Encouraging the pain was not an option. Not when there were so many suffering far worse than she. Not when she knew she would be sending some of these new recruits right to their deaths.

Holstering the gun at her hip, she proceeded to pull on layer after layer, saving the gloves for last, careful when she was finally forced to drag the cloth over the raw, angrily blushing skin of her fingertips, careful not to scream. She was nailed to her cot for a few transient seconds, anchored by the feeling that radiated from her fingers, feeling her hot blood pulse painfully behind the the pads of them. She took a deep, shaky breath, giving herself time to recollect her bearings before venturing out into the frigid, stale air where roll call would begin.

 

 ---

 

“Detroit, pretty lady. You know what they say about guys from Detroit.”

“Birmingham, Alabama, sweet cheeks. Can’t find a finer man. ”

“Baby, can’t you tell? New York, New York, baby. How ‘bout I show you the pretty lights sometime, huh?”

“I gotta show you Chicago sometime, darlin’, the wind here ain’t nothin’ in comparison, and you could wear a nice, pretty dress.”

“Let me buy you a drink after the war down in D.C. We’ll go dancin’, have a few beers. Maybe I’ll even show you the White House. I got my connections.”

“If I tell you where I’m from, do I get to tell you where I’d like _you_ to _be_?” A cocky smirk engulfed one of the recruit’s thin, pale lips, stretching until the corners of them just brushed his ears. Pride burned in his eyes as they stared down at her with almost a challenging gleam. Brown eyes met the degrading ones that so daringly mocked her, a delicate smile of her own spreading across her smooth, blood red lips.

“Step forward, please.” Agent 13’s voice was calm, inviting, yet, it lacked depth. Though that couldn’t be terribly obvious to the man standing in front of her.

A snicker tumbled past his lips, the recruits behind him following suit with a quiet chorus of chuckles, and he closed the distance between them with a small step, now having to look even further down to meet her eye.

He murmured, “Are you sure you want to do this in front of all the fellas, sugar?”

Nothing was more satisfying than the crunch of his nose as her fist connected and the thud of his arse slamming to the frozen turf beneath him. Her frostbite stung, but the pride that raged on inside of her overpowered it as she simply shook out her wrist, adjusted her grip on her clipboard, and continued down the line to the next recruit.

“Brooklyn, New York, ma’am,” He said smoothly, calmly. Politely. Without prompting. Without hesitation.

Her eyes shot up from her clipboard, discovering icy blue eyes, slightly hidden beneath a helmet, peering into her own, and she watched as they shyly fell to the frozen earth, as his cheeks flushed with more color than the bitter wind already caused. It made her uneasy, much more so than the tense silence her bit of violence induced, and she subconsciously switched her weight back and forth between the balls of her feet out of nerves while she jotted the city down and avoided eye contact once more. She was glad, when she caught herself, that it looked as if she were just trying to keep warm before she moved on to the next recruit, wondering why it seemed that a tiny, hot ball of lead now singed the inside of her stomach, clouding her head. That shade of blue filled every inch of her vision, even when another recruit dared to sneer at her just after she’d just knocked one of the others out.

 

\---

           

Brooklyn couldn’t have been a finer man. He was precise, dedicated, strong. He looked forward rather than hanging back and letting the other men trample over him, especially for breaking the line of ridicule they’d drawn for Agent 13 that morning. He kept going. He wasn’t trying to prove anything to anyone. He was just doing what he was trained to do: fight, and fight because it was the right thing to do. Not because holding a gun made a person seem important in this world, made them feel powerful.

He caught her eye more than once over the next week. When he sacrificed himself in a bomb exercise. When he outsmarted the others, quite a few times. When he glanced over at her briefly, sharing a shy smile. When he politely greeted her and politely bid her goodnight.

Not wanting to acknowledge it, she began to admire him, aspiring to model herself after him, to follow in his footsteps and be a better woman as he is a better man.

Her heart thudded loudly at the thought of him, seeing those icy blues as clear as day every time she closed her eyes. Unless it was a side effect of the agony as she pried the gloves off of her peeling, even more raw, exposed skin of her fingers, but she hardly felt it. The thoughts swirling around in her mind kept her numb, kept her distracted. What was happening to her?

But she had hardly a minute of the time needed to ponder such a question, when a cry broke through her haze.

“Измена! Treason!” Someone screamed in the camp, the shrill voice piercing through the night and the heavy sounds of freezing rain, the panicked footsteps nearing the camp, pounding against the dirt. “Измена! Измена!”

 

\---

 

The commander was dead. Shot, point blank in the back of the head with what looked to be an American rifle. Treason. Someone in their ranks had killed the commander. And with her rank, all fingers pointed to her. Treason. No one hesitated to suspect a woman having done it.

Days passed. Higher officers flocked to their camp, weaving in and out of tents, searching for the missing murder weapon. More eyes fell heavy on Agent 13, looking at her with the abandonment of the idea that all suspects are innocent until proven guilty. Even higher officers even glared when they passed her. When they sweeped her tent and came up with nothing, still, they glared.

Two weeks passed. A letter calling her to a mandatory interrogation was thrown at her one morning by one of the colonels, one that didn’t miss the opportunity to spit out as many insults as he could, some he expressed without having to say anything, before he stormed out of her tent. Agent 13 had fumed, face flushed with burning color as she tore through her tent, finding her as pressed as possible uniform and dressing, anxiety boiling through her at the thought of being practically put on trial. She supposed it was now or never.

But the fuse was already lit.

 

* * *

  _Which brings us back to the beginning..._

* * *

 

Her heart felt as if it might burst into flames at any given moment.

She’d taken notice of him. He seemed to have taken notice of her.

Her skin stung as she stood from the freezing metal chair when she heard the shuffle of the officers as they neared the tent. Her hands balled into fists at her side, a poor attempt at channeling the anger into something that didn’t involve someone’s nose being at the other end of her fist. But, oh, how she so desperately wanted to do so much more than break the noses of the men that immediately looked down at her as they stepped into the tent, already decided that she was guilty.

_Brooklyn, what have you done to me?_

Agent 13’s palms were slick with sweat as they asked her to take a seat. Her mind was clouded, her heart was beating faster and louder with each second that passed. She almost wanted to pick a fight that she knew she wouldn’t win. Wanted to land a few good punches, a few good kicks before they threw her out. She almost wanted to pick a fight that would ruin her. Her emotions ran rampant, dancing in freedom as they breached the wall in her mind she spent so long building. This was her breaking point.

_Brooklyn, you’ve broken me._

 

\---

 

It could take weeks, they said, to prove that she was guilty. But they would find a way. Who else would have been the culprit? Who else would have had motive to murder their higher up in cold blood with the hopes of taking their place? Legitimately or not. They would find a way. For now, some other officer would take control of being the temporary commander. She wasn’t to even touch a map before the investigation concluded.

Those weeks passed. Every night, Agent 13 trembled, not with cold, with fear, with anxiety, depression, desire, fury, joy: every emotion came crashing down on her, the walls now long crumbled. Her entire being to crumbled. Tears cleared through the thick layers of grime and dirt that smothered her face, leaving trails, leaving evidence. It was over. Her career was finished. And she had no one to blame but herself: For not being strong enough.

And one night, one of the first ones without rain, sleet, hail or snow, someone uncovered the evidence.

 _Brooklyn_.

“Excuse me, ma’am, I have a le—” His boots glued themselves to the entrance of her tent, eyes curiously examining the tears that trickled down over her chin, his eyebrows furrowing in concern. She shamefully swiped at her face, trying her damnedest to erase it all, but to no avail. He’d seen. She was exposed, completely vulnerable. And why wouldn’t she be in front of the person who started the chain reaction that caused it?

“Set it on the table, please, soldier,” She responded robotically, hoping to avoid the inner turmoil she was experiencing spilling out even more so than it already had. But he didn’t budge. Rather, he took a step closer, and that one step made her obligated to catch his eye, despite the strong desire against it. Only when she looked and him did she realize that it was the first time that they’d ever been alone together. It was the first time that anyone had looked at her like a normal human being, not an evil criminal bent on destroying the world. And it was the first time in a long time that she could breathe despite the drowning emotions filling her head.

Her heart drummed a bit quicker, responding to the hand he cautiously, subconsciously raised, aimed at swiping away a tear that she had missed before he came to and let his arm fall to his side. It was him. He was her trigger. He was her kryptonite, her one weakness that immediately crippled her. Those icy blue eyes hypnotized her.

“S-sorry,” He stammered, retreating a step, increasing the distance and lessening his hold on her. _Brooklyn, come back._

Agent 13 snagged her lower lip with her teeth, gathering the nerve to dare and speak through the bundle of nerves in her stomach that tugged at her with every syllable that rolled off of his lips. “It’s quite all right. You were, hm, you were saying?”

“I was say.. Right!” Somewhat excitedly, he reached into his breast pocket and fished out a folded envelope, a bit of a shy smile finding its way to his lips as he smoothed it out before holding it towards her. “Right, I, um, I saw this on the table of mail earlier, saw the guys hanging around it, looking for... “ His cheeks reddened, and his head bowed slightly before he continued, “Looking for your mail to try to probably vandalize it somehow. I grabbed it before they saw it. Figured I’d keep it safe until I could, um, give it to you myself. I-I, sorry, I read it,” Her eyebrows shot up, heart lurching into her throat, sounding incessantly in her ears. “...because of where it’s from, and it’s part of the reason I.. I should just shut up.”

A quiet laugh broke the silence. An ever so quiet laugh, hardly audible, filled the gap between words as she dared to retrieve the envelope from his hand, inviting him to take a seat while she opened it and ignoring the return address.

The letter was slowly unfolded, crinkling with the bit of wear it had seen from being in his pocket. As she soaked in the words typed boldly across the paper, something within her clicked. Something missing finally found its home. A piece long forgotten completed the puzzle. Her deep brown eyes fell from the page and raised until they found the slightly shy, but ever so icy blue hues that peered down at her anxiously. Though she normally wouldn’t care to admit it, shock of warmth shot right up her spine. He’d done this for her. Something completely out of turn, yet he’d done it. _Why?_

Suddenly, there was no air in her lungs. She gasped for a moment before it all came rushing forward, slamming into her like a solid brick wall. The tears that were once in her eyes, they returned. The racing heart in her chest, it pounded quicker. But the cold fear was replaced with something much warmer. Balance. Content. She tightened her grip on the letter.

Impulse compelled her forward. Emotion won. With him here, there was no fighting. And she didn’t want to fight anymore. Her mind settled. Her lips brushed his smooth cheek.

“Thank you,” She whispered hurriedly as she reeled back, cheeks flushing with embarrassment, though a smile dared to pull at her lips. And for the first time, she allowed her voice to break with emotion freely. “You-you hardly had to do any of that, nor should they have listened to you. You must’ve been convincing.”

A quiet chuckle rumbled in his chest, his own cheeks colored, and he rubbed at the spot her lips had left a soft red print. “It’s a little hard not to be convincing when you’re talking about what a wonderful leader you are. And how you couldn’t possibly have been the one to murder the commander. Not when, uh,” He paused, scratching the back of his neck with a sheepish grin, “You were watchin’ me make a fool out of myself in front of all the other fellas.”

“You’re certainly not a fool.” Her smile, now fully stretched across her face, was more radiant than ever. Now, she was now a woman finally at peace with herself, with her ability to feel, indulge, and express in emotions without restraint. They locked gazes once more. “Or I don’t believe I’d be your commander now.”

_Brooklyn._

_Brooklyn, you've made me whole._

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
